Something's Wrong with Bugger!
by Besprizornye
Summary: A young girl learns about pokémon evolution from her mother.


"Mama! Something's wrong with Bugger!"

My eyes shot open as soon as I heard my daughter's cry, and I reluctantly got out of bed and put on my robe. I spared a glance at the alarm clock by my bed and immediately wished that I hadn't. It was five-thirty in the morning, and with my husband already at work, it was up to me to solve whatever problem June was having.

When I saw her standing in the doorway to my bedroom in her pajamas with wide eyes and a pale face, my mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario. I had never been a hundred percent on-board with her first pokémon being a caterpie, much less her sleeping with that particular breed of pokémon in her bed every night. My first assumption was that she had done what I had long reckoned as inevitable and rolled over in her sleep and squished the poor creature under her small but rapidly growing six-year-old frame. When I tried to push past her, June tugged on my sleeve insistently. "Mama, you have to help him!"

"I need to have my coffee, June. Please."

But seeing my daughter so unnerved convinced me to delay my usual morning ritual for just a little while and see what had happened. With heavy, dragging steps, I let June lead me to her room. As we walked, I was already preparing the inevitable speech I was going to have to make explaining death to my little girl. It was not something that I was looking forward to, especially bereft of my daily dose of caffeine.

I hadn't been at all sure about getting our daughter a pokémon at such a young age, but my husband was insistent. He told me all about how his sister had had a vulpix growing up and it was a great experience for her. It taught her about responsibility, he said, and had been a great comfort and friend for her. So, when he went out one day promising June that he would be bringing home a pokémon for her, I was expecting something similar to what my sister-in-law had owned. But instead of a vulpix or a meowth, he brought home a squirming, crawling caterpie. I couldn't say anything either, because June was over the moon about the bug pokémon and there was no way that I was going to break my daughter's heart.

We stepped into the room, which was already bright and cheery even with the early morning light due to all of the pink present in June's toys, furniture, and even on the pattern of the peeling wallpaper. There, sticking out like a sore thumb in the tangled mess of her bedsheets was a dark green shape. I looked at it dully and it looked back at June and I as we stepped entirely into the room.

"What happened to Bugger?" June asked, suddenly behind my legs instead of in front of me.

"Oh, sweetie," I said, patting her blonde head gently, "your pokémon evolved, that's all."

June scrunched up her face and looked skeptically at the creature on her bed and then at me. "What does that mean?"

I sighed, but I couldn't hide the small smile on my face. I was still going to have to make a speech, but luckily for me it was going to be an easier life lesson than the one that I had been afraid of. "Why don't you grab Bugger and I'll tell you about it over breakfast."

June started towards her bed but stopped short. She looked at the pokémon and then turned around and ran out of the room. I took a deep breath and picked up Bugger for her, cradling its changed body in my arm like I had cradled June when she was a baby.

"Metapod?" the pokémon asked and I found myself answering what I thought was its question.

"It'll be okay. I'll talk to her, then she won't be afraid of you anymore."

If I had to guess, I would say that Bugger's muffled reply of "metapod" sounded grateful, but I wasn't sure. It was June's pokémon, not mine, so whatever bond I had with the cocooned creature was practically nonexistent.

I walked to the kitchen and found June there shoveling down spoon after spoon of some sugary cereal that was definitely not good for her. When she saw Bugger in the crook of my arm, she tensed up. It was amazing how quickly she could flip moods so easily. I was probably the same way when I was a kid, even if I couldn't remember it.

"Only one bowl," I said as sternly as I could, which was not very stern at all, given the circumstances. "I know it's summer, but you're going to have a proper breakfast." I set Bugger on the table at one end of our circular dining table, opposite of June. "How do eggs sound?"

June nodded, but she did not stop looking Bugger, as if the poor metapod was going to jump at her or something.

Moving around the kitchen, I started the coffee maker and cracked some eggs in the pan for us. The simple domestic tasks were mindless enough that I could formulate my thoughts and think of an opening line to use for what could turn out to be a very long conversation with my daughter.

I ended up settling on answering what I guessed would be June's most pressing question. "That's still the same pokémon that you know in there," I said without looking up from my work.

June looked at me like I had a hole in my head and my brains were leaking out of it. "He's _not_ the same pokémon, mama."

"That's true," I admitted and glanced at the coffee maker. No luck there. "Hm, it's like when you get a haircut. Even when your hair is different, you're still the same person, right?"

"Yeah," said June sulkily around another bite of her cereal. "But this is a lot bigger deal than a haircut!"

I scratched my head and looked at Bugger. I was thinking about how well it was behaving, not crawling around or anything, but then I remembered that it was a metapod now and couldn't have slithered around my table even if it wanted to. I really needed my coffee.

"Okay," I began again, "every year, you have a birthday."

"Yeah," said June tentatively, like she was on her guard for any rhetorical tricks I might attempt.

"You stopped being five a few months ago and became six, and the year before that you were four." I looked at June and she nodded slowly. "And I used to be a little girl like you a long time ago."

"A long, _long_ time ago," added June helpfully.

I dished out the eggs and served them to June and myself. "Sure. A long time ago, I was six years old like you, but every year that went by I got bigger and wiser and then I was an adult, all grown up."

"But what does this have to do with Bugger?"

"I'm getting to that, honey." First, I poured myself a cup of coffee and, after adding some cream and sugar, savored my first cup of the day. I breathed out a sigh of contentment, and resumed my explanation, "Some kinds of pokémon don't become adults like we do. With caterpie, like Bugger, they grow up in spurts, all at once. That's evolution, in a nutshell."

It was quiet in the kitchen except for the sounds of my daughter and I eating. June seemed to be chewing over some questions along with her scrambled eggs. She was studying her pokémon with a critical eye and suddenly asked, "So Bugger's all growed-up now? He's going to be like this forever?"

I laughed softly. The coffee really had put me in a better mood than I had been in when I first woke up. "No, no, sweetie. Hold on, I'll show you."

Taking my cup of coffee with me, I got up from the table and made my way into the living room. I considered getting one of June's picture books, but I couldn't remember if she had any with a butterfree in it and didn't want to dally for too long. Fortunately, I remembered a coffee table book that my husband and I had gotten as a wedding gift and subsequently never opened entitled "Wildlife of Southern Johto: Photographs and Illustrations". I grabbed it, used my robe to wipe off the thin layer of dust that had accumulated on its cover since the last time I cleaned the living room, and then brought it back to the kitchen with me.

June had left her eggs on the table and was taking her box of unhealthy cereal off of the counter when I stepped back into the room. "Put it back and finish your plate," I said. "I have something for you."

I opened it up in front of her and her plate, and I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for. There was a beautifully painted scene of a grassy field with all manner of pokémon that were posed so well that even the rattata had a kind of majesty to them. I pointed at the top of the two-page spread and said, "See those pokémon there? _That's _what Bugger will look like when it is fully grown."

First, June's eyes went wide and then she squinted to look at every single detail in the picture. Wordlessly, I moved her metapod to a new spot on the table where it could look at the book too. June shied away from the pokémon at first, but not as much as before and was too engrossed in the picture in front of her to waste time being uncomfortable with Bugger's presence. When she had taken in every lovingly crafted line of the butterfree flying happily over the painted field, my daughter turned the page and then another, looking for more pictures of what her pokémon would become.

"How does it happen, mama?" she asked me without looking up from the book. She had found a page with a photograph of a bright violet butterfree helpfully diagrammed and labeled by the authors.

"Well, some pokémon evolve because they have a lot of experience battling." I saw the fearful look in June's eyes when she looked up from the picture to her pokémon. "But don't worry, sweetheart, with a metapod like Bugger I think that it just happens with time. I'll have to look it up, but I think that in a few weeks, your friend will be out of that cocoon and be able to play with you again."

June bit her lip. "You mean I can't play with him now?"

"Well, you can, but you just have to be gentle."

"I'm always gentle!"

From past experiences, I knew that this wasn't true, but there was no sense engaging in an argument. Instead, I said soothingly, "Of course you are, but your pokémon is going through a big change and needs your help staying safe until it's ready to come out as a beautiful butterfree."

June studied the page intently for a few minutes and I used the respite to refill my coffee mug. When I sat back down, she said in a small voice, "It feels different cuddling with Bugger now. That's why I woke up." I didn't say anything, just inclined my head to show that I was listening, and my little girl continued, "He's so hard and pointy now. It hurts when I hold him. And when he has those big old wings, he won't be able to sleep in my bed at all."

Another drink of my coffee gave me time to think, and that was when I noticed how Bugger, from what limited information I could get from just its eyes, had gone from looking excited to downcast. "June," I said, "how do you think that your words are making your pokémon feel?"

She looked at the sulking metapod and asked, "Sad?"

I nodded, and after letting June process her own thoughts for a little while, I said, "Bugger's going through a lot of changes right now and they're scary to it too. Your pokémon needs your support and love right now. It's still the same Bugger as before in there, it just looks different on the outside. It still wants to be your friend." And then, silently grateful that my husband wasn't home to see this, I addressed the pokémon itself, "Right, Bugger?"

"Meta-pod!" was its muffled response. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded positive enough to me.

Whatever my shortcomings in that department, June had no difficulty in understanding her pokémon. "I'm sorry, Bugger!" she said and hugged her metapod. The pokémon leaned into her and two of them looked as close as they had been yesterday.

I watched them over my coffee as the two of them continued to eagerly devour the pictures in the book that I had given June and I smiled. My husband and I would have to prepare for the next evolution since a flapping butterfree spreading its potentially toxic spores everywhere was not in any way an indoor pokémon. We would have to build a shelter for Bugger in the backyard and then again explain this new change to June. But that was all in the future and for now I was content to watch my daughter and her pokémon happily being together.


End file.
